I'd say so. Have you ever seen a total eclipse in person? At the very least, it's breathtaking.

This. Last time I saw a total eclipse, right at the moment of totality, I got goose bumps all over. Must be something in the primitive brain that still gets scared about these things.

There's also the crowd around you - the shared experience. All that tension building up to a real experience (as opposed to watching Iron Man on the movie screen, swooping through the city), and, well, you get the picture.

/ Corona was beautiful// Disappointed when the sun re-appeared/// Had to get back to work

FTA:Light spilled back to Earth, visible as illuminated fingers in the cloud, as the camera flashes of an estimated 60,000 tourists and locals rippled along the coastline in a 170km-wide band of moon shadow.

shiftyphil:FTA:Light spilled back to Earth, visible as illuminated fingers in the cloud, as the camera flashes of an estimated 60,000 tourists and locals rippled along the coastline in a 170km-wide band of moon shadow.

Really people? Using a flash to photograph the sun?

Maybe they were being artistic - set wide angle to include the crowd, use the flash to fill in foreground details because having the sun in frame would close the aperture.

I'd say so. Have you ever seen a total eclipse in person? At the very least, it's breathtaking.

This. Last time I saw a total eclipse, right at the moment of totality, I got goose bumps all over. Must be something in the primitive brain that still gets scared about these things.

There's also the crowd around you - the shared experience. All that tension building up to a real experience (as opposed to watching Iron Man on the movie screen, swooping through the city), and, well, you get the picture.

/ Corona was beautiful// Disappointed when the sun re-appeared/// Had to get back to work

This. I was in a boat between Antigua and Montserrat for the February 1998 total eclipse. We headed out and anchored above a reef well before the whole thing started. I knew all the established science behind it, and I understood the entire process front to back. I still got a overwhelming sense of combined awe and dread when the sky went dark. Hell, just remembering that day I can still bring back that feeling. Even knowing exactly what would happen, exactly when it would happen, and exactly when it would end, I still got a little freaked out by it.

I think part of that is the suddenness. The change in the light and shadows just before totality is unreal and unexpectedly FAST. It's especially fast considering you've been watching the partial eclipse slowly progress for about an hour, and there's just a shadow moving over part of the sun, and nothing has really happened yet... then it goes from slightly dim to "holy shiat" in about 10 minutes... and right when you think it's about as dark as it will get, that last bit slides behind the moon and it's like someone flicked the light switch.

We had six people on the boat, four science geeks, a jock, and a few band nerds (there was some overlap). At the moment of totality, three of us just collapsed into chairs, two people let out a decent squeak, and the jock just said "holy shiat, dude" in a low, awestruck voice I'd never heard from him before or since.